Twenty Years On and Still Remembering

Marketing & advertising can be pleasantly predictable at times. Tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of 9/11, so today is a busy, but easy day. Social media posts for eight clients – same topic, similar images, similar blurbs. Bada Bing Bada Boom. Finally, it is time to do a post for my own company. As soon as I knock that out, I can start my weekend. But it’s just not coming together. I’m too emotional.

As a Disaster Action Team volunteer with the Red Cross, I deployed to New York shortly after the attacks. I was part of the second wave, so it was early October, and I was supposed to stay for three weeks. Turned out, I only stayed two before going home to deal with a family emergency. By that time, I was already broken. I was concerned about my lungs and trying to hide my cough.

The family emergency worked itself out, but I was a wreck. It hurt to breathe, it hurt to cough, I couldn’t sleep, and I was angry. My ex would drive me to the ER where they took chest x-rays, gave me a nebulizer, and sent me home with Albuterol. There was no literature about WTC cough yet, but my doctor read everything he could find so we would know what to expect. Twenty years later, I have “clear” chest x-rays except for some minor scarring on my right lung. I still have mild pain and need Albuterol and Advair on occasion, but you wouldn’t know if I didn’t tell you.?

The pain in my lungs couldn’t hold a candle to the pain in my gut though. It was invisible to you, but I could see it in my mind. It was a big, broken, jagged chunk of cinderblock that crashed straight down from the towers and landed right it my body. I could feel its grit grinding inside me and its edges stabbing my ribs. It was sadness, resentment, and anger. I didn’t know who or what I was angry at, but someone was gonna pay! That someone was me. I didn’t act out deliberately, but I became pretty reckless. I drank a bit more, spent a lot more, and was hanging out with a new crowd. The cinderblock was too painful, and I had no idea how to get rid of it, so I was having fun at all costs. My amazing doctor prescribed anxiety medication and referred me to a therapist. The meds helped, the therapy did not. I wasn’t ready for it yet.

Over time, the pain began to ease. I could see the cinderblock breaking down and shrinking a little more with each passing year. I didn’t feel like I was healing, but I was moving forward. Anniversaries were tough. I barely got out of bed for the first one. Then I became nervous about the second one. The anxiety started earlier every year. I would worry about becoming anxious about the anniversary, so after a while, I was panicking by mid-July about the upcoming date in September.

In 2007, I moved to Mobile, Alabama. I became friends with a pastor and mentioned my experience. He offered to pray with me, which I accepted politely. I believe in the power of prayer, but thought he was hardly qualified to know my pain. Over the next several weeks, the confusion and pain started to unravel in my head and in my heart. It was truly mind-altering. I was finally beginning to see my experience from an entirely different perspective.

In New York, I had been a case worker. Stationed at the corner of Canal Street and Avenue of the Americas, I worked with people employed in the Towers or displaced residents from China Town and Battery Park. My job was to help them with emergency needs – food, shelter, clothing, and referrals to additional resources. It was tedious paperwork, but we were supposed to take down the information and send them off with disbursement orders for said needs. We were not to ask for sensational details, but one after another, clients would sit down and recount the entire day. I’d say, “Good morning. How are you?” and they’d tell me. (Note to self, avoid open-ended questions.)

A gentleman came in with a cast on his arm and I asked what happened. He told me. He worked for Otis. He lost 18 friends. He did not say he broke his arm, as I was expecting. He did not just recount the day’s events. What he did do was re-live the day, and he took me with him, as if we were walking through it together. He was back at Ground Zero and experiencing it all, right before my eyes. He gave so much detail that when I watched the Naudet Brothers' documentary, I recognized everything he described. It was chilling. I had never been inside the World Trade Center, but it was all so familiar.?

When our time came to an end, he asked if he could give me something to remember him by. It is a pin of the Towers with the American Flag, and it says, “United We Stand”. Never, ever in my life, have I fought back tears as hard as I did at that moment. We were not allowed to cry in public. If we couldn’t handle the stress, they would send us home. It made sense, but I didn’t go to New York just to be sent home. So, I didn’t cry. I thanked him, we hugged, and said good-bye.

When I sat down, everything was different. Voices blended into a low hum. I looked to the left. Everyone moved in slow-motion, and all the colors were faded. I just thought he’d say he broke his arm. That was it. That is the moment I believe my brain broke. Physiologically, I don’t know what happened, but it happened in those three seconds.

This was one of many testimonies I had to unravel if I was ever going to heal. And then it hit me. Instead of seeing only darkness, I began to see the light. Instead of always cursing Bin Laden, I was beginning to see the Face of God. God’s love was present in so many testimonies. My Otis employee? In addition to telling me he lost 18 friends, he had told me about a stranger who fell in the lobby and was trapped. He heard her screaming and ran back to free the woman and her sister. As he aimed them toward the door, a piece of concrete fell and pinned him down. By the Grace of God, he broke free and fled the building. God was all around him. God sent him back to free the sisters. That wasn't logic, it wasn't ego, and it certainly was not evil. It was God.

Another client. A man went to vote while his disabled wife was at home in their ninth-floor apartment. Then it happened. At first, no one would help his wife evacuate. Finally, she got out and he found her on the sidewalk. Conditions, too unnatural to describe here, blocked her wheelchair access, so he lifted her up and carried her several blocks to retrieve their children from two different schools, each in opposite directions. God’s love gave this husband the physical strength to carry his wife and rescue his family.

It was everywhere. No matter how much evil struck America that day – God's love could not be extinguished. Bin Laden killed 2,996 Americans, but he could not kill God.

So why get emotional after 20 years? Nearly 3,000 people lost their lives, that’s why. Even worse, their families lost them. They lost their husbands, wives, fathers, daughters, brothers, and sisters. It hurts to realize they may still be suffering. But that’s part of why we remember the day – so we can show up, offer a shoulder to cry on, and keep them in our hearts every day of the year.